14 June 2023
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — The City of Wichita held a briefing Tuesday afternoon to discuss a new public report sharing improvements made by the Wichita Police Department (WPD).
Jensen Hughes’ Operational Assessment is an independent report analyzing WPD’s culture, policies, and practices through seven key areas. The City of Wichita says the progress and details of the assessment are available to the public to improve transparency and trust with citizens.
The City asked for the Jensen Hughes review last year, partially in response to a text message scandal involving officers.
The final review was completed in March and lists 54 recommendations on how WPD can improve. So far, 17 recommendations have been implemented, 21 are in progress, and 16 are under review.
The Citizens Review Board says that the report is just a starting place for the many improvements the WPD needs to make.
“The Jensen Hughes report and the dashboard is a starting place, but just as my forerunner has said, there is more work to be done. We do believe that that template is going to be wonderful as far as exposing and helping us to elevate our city, as far as policing and community involvement,” said Odell Harris Jr., Vice Chair of the Citizens Review Board.
“We as the racial profiling board stand with the mayor in keeping that heat up and sounding the alarm about what needs to be done, what must be done, and what the community says and thinks,” explained Sheila Officer with the Wichita Racial Profiling Advisory Board, “This board is optimistic and hopeful that we can expect what we refer to as the ‘A-C-Triple T.’ A, accountability. C, credibility. Three t’s, transparency, trustworthiness, and truth.”
Other meeting attendees expressed a desire for change in officer qualification and social media use.
“We need a change in the policy regarding how members of the Wichita Police Department utilize social media. We’ve had a problem with some officers misusing social media in a manner that was racist, sexist, homophobic… whatever. And those officers, for the most part are still on the force. We’ve got to make some changes in these areas,” said James Barfield, President of the Kansas Advocates for Racial Justice and Equality.
Mayor Brandon Whipple says completing the recommended improvements will also help the department make valuable steps toward accreditation at a state level.
“We are also utilizing this moment to achieve accreditation status in the state that, frankly, we’ve never had here in Wichita. So, we got these dual projects going on. If it wasn’t for Jensen Hughes, I think that It would be a lot tougher for us to gain accreditation. So by taking these side-by-side, it means that the outcome of these is going to be the best police department in the entirety of the state,” says Mayor Whipple.
While earning accreditation will be a lengthy process, the WPD plans to make the Jensen Hughes recommended changes much sooner.
“We don’t anticipate that implementing the Jensen Hughes recommendations will take two years. We certainly anticipate getting that done quicker. It’s a smaller number of recommendations that we hope to make our way through. Some of them, as you’ll see, require contract negotiations and other things, so some of them may take longer than other recommendations to implement,” said WPD Lieutenant Aaron Moses.